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With over 1,700 years of history, sake is older than the Japanese written language. Lore has it that sake's origin ocurred when some natural airborne yeast landed in an open container of rice producing a slightly fermented liquid that gave some lucky farmers a pleasant buzz. A more factual history documents it as having migrated with the first Chinese immigrants to arrive in Japan. In any case, by the year 700 or so, sake had gained the favor of the Japanese Imperial Court which formed its own brewing department. As Buddhism took root in Japan, sake took on a religious ceremonial role bringing sake-making directly into the hands of the shrines and temples. It was during this period, that sake brewing methods and “technology” made major advances creating the beverage that resembles what we know today. In the ensuing 400 to 500 years, breweries cropped up all over the region around the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto. During this period pasteurization was also discovered (around 300 years before Louis Pasteur was born) as a means of prolonging the life of the product.

From its ceremonial start, sake went on to become a staple of daily life for common folk and an integral part of the national culture. Following WW II, the end of rice rationing and brewing innovations produced great strides in sake diversity and quality with Japanese national consumption peaking in 1974. Unfortunately, the volume and number of breweries have been in decline ever since.

Today, there are roughly 1,100 active sake breweries (sakagura or kura) spread throughout all but one of Japan’s 48 prefectures. Sounds like quite a few right? Well, in 1923 there were about 10,000! And, as recently as 1988, there were still 2,500.

While the number of breweries and overall sake production has fallen, the good news is that premium sake production has actually increased. Even better news is that we in the U.S. are a prime market that has captured the attention of Japan’s sake industry. The interest in sake in our country has grown rapidly as evidenced by the double digit increases in year-over-year import volume over the last several years. Our country has only begun to discover the pleasures that centuries of Japanese brewing craftsmanship has created and refined to one of the most intriguingly complex, food friendly beverages on the planet.